Where the Monsters Are
by Liam Needsom
Summary: A simple question from Amanda sends Lee on a mission to find out more about his parents - but it raises more questions than answers. An "Unfinished Business" filler story.
1. Night Terrors

Lee paused in the doorway to the bedroom, taking a moment to enjoy the little skip in his heartbeat that he felt every time he saw Amanda and the little ripple of anticipation that now he could allow himself to openly enjoy it. He'd acknowledged his feelings for her internally a long time since but now… now he didn't have to squelch them down out of sight, always that slight fear that she didn't – couldn't – feel the same way, that her smiles and her hand squeezes were nothing but friendship or a teasing flirtation between co-workers.

Now she was here, comfortably stretched out in his bed as if she belonged there - and she did, oh God, yes she did – with tousled hair hanging down, almost covering her face and that little freckle peeking out, the one he'd found just under her bra strap on her side, the one that had rapidly become the target of his own little treasure hunt when they were intimate. It amused her endlessly that he was so intent on memorizing all her little marks and scars, but really he just loved to hear her explain them, to hear the stories of childhood accidents always told with that self-deprecating laughter rumbling in her chest, squirming with delight as he kissed and licked and nuzzled each one in turn. And if he found himself returning time and time again to the those tiny lines along the sides along her belly, tracing them with his fingertips while resolutely refusing to let himself wonder if maybe she'd want… well, he never voiced it and she never said a word as he studied them.

The object of his study looked up, smile lighting up her face and dainty pink flush coloring her cheeks – and a few other body parts he noted with glee as he grinned back at her.

"Whaaaat?" she drew out the word in a teasing question.

"Nothing. Just enjoying the view," he answered, making his way back to the bed.

Amanda puffed out a quiet chuckle as he leaned down to kiss her. "Ditto," she smiled up at him. She shifted to make room for him, but held onto the framed picture she'd been studying when he'd returned.

"You know, you look so much like your father," she held out the picture. "It's almost eerie."

"Do I?" He took it from her and squinted at it. "I suppose so. I never gave it much thought."

"Well, you have the same smile, the dimples – I bet if this wasn't a black and white photo, you'd have the same eye color."

Lee stared at it a beat longer. "I guess you're right. Huh." He gazed down at the smiling couple on their wedding day – he had no idea who the other people in the photo were and his memories of his parents were so damn foggy. He concentrated, trying to come up with a memory of his childhood and found almost nothing, all of them subsumed by the pain of loss that came later. He realized Amanda was asking him something.

"I'm sorry – what?"

Amanda caressed his cheek with her knuckles, giving him an understanding smile, but saying nothing about the way she could see his attention had wandered. "I asked if this is the only picture you have of them."

"Oh! Yeah," He was still only half-listening to her.

"That's odd, don't you think?"

"I- what?"

"It's odd – that there's only the one photo of your parents," Amanda took it out of his hands and studied it some more.

"Why is that odd?"

Amanda looked up, surprised. "Well, from what you've told me, they were a normal couple with a child they loved. So where are the baby photos, the vacation pictures, the family pictures? That just seems odd to me."

"Well, my uncle and I moved a lot with the Air Force," Lee felt compelled to explain. "We didn't keep a lot of stuff when we had to keep boxing it up and taking it to the next place."

"Oh Lee, I know that, and of course you wouldn't have taken a houseful of stuff with you, but photos don't take up much room, and it's not like your uncle wanted you to forget your mom and dad, is it? He wouldn't have just dumped something like that."

"No, he never wanted that," he agreed slowly. "We didn't talk about them a lot, but he definitely mentioned them." He gave her a wry look. "Usually when he wanted me to do something I didn't want to do."

Amanda put the photo down and leaned into him, pressing a kiss on his bicep before lifting his arm out of the way to snuggle in closer. "He was doing his best, you know." She gave a low laugh. "And you two are _so_ very alike."

"I know," Lee admitted. "Hindsight's 20-20, but it's hard to forget what it felt like back then. The feeling he hated me when I was younger, hated me for what he'd had to give up to raise me, hated me for what he suspected I was…"

"Oh come on, now," Amanda began.

"I know now he didn't," Lee stopped her quickly. "I'm just saying that it's not easy to forget how I felt at the time."

Amanda made a humming noise against his chest, part acknowledgement, part distress. "Have you talked to him lately?"

"Not much," Lee admitted. "He hasn't been back in DC since Christmas and neither of us are much in the habit of checking in."

"Lee-ee," she sing-songed with a sigh. "He's your family."

"A-man-da," he began to sing-song back, mockingly, stopping when she raised herself on one elbow and lifted worried eyes to meet his. "Fine," he conceded. "I'll call him."

"Good," she answered, comfortably, as she let him draw her back down to rest against him. "He needs you."

Lee couldn't hold in the bark of laughter. "Robert Clayton never needed anyone in his life."

Amanda didn't look up this time, just continued to trace circles on his chest with her finger. "There are people who say that about you, you know." Lee didn't answer, but she could feel the shot hit home in the slight intake of his breath and the momentary stiffening of his body.

"I'll call him," came the quiet response.

* * *

He couldn't have said what it was about working on the Sinclair files that made him remember that promise a few days later. Realization wouldn't hit him for weeks yet, but for now, he just had an uneasy feeling that he needed to make that call _now_.

"Hello Colonel, it's Lee."

"Hey Skip, what's the problem?"

Lee stifled an irritated sigh. Of course that was where his uncle went immediately. There was only one person in the world who could get under his skin like this – and only three years of Amanda's good influence kept him from coming back with a snarky one-liner. And then, in the beat where that comment would normally have landed, he realized his uncle had gone on speaking, his voice filled with concern.

"Are you alright? It's nothing with Amanda, is it? She isn't hurt, is she? "

"No, no, she's fine," he rushed to reassure him. "It's nothing to do with her, I mean, it is, but it's nothing bad."

"Are you marrying her?"

"What? No!" Lee spluttered. "Why would you go there? We're barely even… barely anything."

His uncle's deep chuckle came rolling down the line. "Barely anything, he says. Okay, so if it's not bad news and it's not good news, what can I do for you?"

"I can't just be calling to say hello?" asked Lee, snippily.

"Skip." His uncle packed a range of reactions into the single syllable.

"Yeah, okay – Amanda brought something up and suggested I ask you," he admitted.

"Okay then, shoot."

"Well, the thing is… Amanda was looking at Mom and Dad's wedding photo, you know the one?"

"The one you keep in your bedroom?" teased the Colonel. "Yes, I know it."

"Cut that out," said Lee plaintively. "Anyway, she was asking why I only have the one picture so I said I'd call and ask if there are any others."

"Well, of course there are others," exclaimed the Colonel. "Boxes of 'em"

"Boxes of them?" repeated Lee incredulously. "Why haven't I ever seen them?"

"You don't remember?" asked his uncle, sounding equally surprised.

"If I remembered, would I be asking? Where have you been hiding them all this time?"

"Calm down, Skip," his uncle admonished him. "I wasn't hiding anything." Lee could hear him taking a deep breath at the other end of the line. "I guess it shouldn't surprise me you don't remember – you probably blocked it out."

"Blocked it out? What are you talking about?"

"When you came to me after that first year with my mother, you started having nightmares, almost every night. I mean, it was hardly surprising, so much had happened to you in such a short period of time, but it was impossible to get you to go to sleep at night until you just collapsed with exhaustion – and then a few hours later, you'd be awake screaming again. I was just about out of my mind after a few weeks."

"What were the nightmares about? Mom and Dad?" Lee felt like his uncle would expect him to ask, but he already knew what they were about – he'd had them for years and was having them again – but he tried to sound only just interested enough that his uncle wouldn't suspect anything was wrong. Amanda was already giving him worried looks – the last thing he needed was those two comparing notes.

"Well, no, that was the odd thing. They weren't about your parents or your grandmother, they were about monsters and bogeymen that were out to get you. I tried everything, telling you that I'd keep you safe, that your parents were watching from heaven and they'd keep away the monsters – nothing worked. Those first few months, I swear I woke up more often in the armchair in your room than I did in my own bed."

"You did? Why?"

"You didn't want to be alone," answered his uncle gruffly. "Sometimes the only way I could get you to sleep was if I promised to keep you company."

"Really?" asked Lee in disbelief. "You did that?"

"Well if I didn't, you'd just come and climb in my bed and you were all pointy elbows and kicking feet. The armchair was a damn sight more comfortable. Matt would have done the same – you and Jennie were his whole world."

Lee could hear the slight embarrassment in his uncle's voice at admitting to bending to the will of a stubborn child and swallowed against the sudden tightening of his throat. Time to get back on topic, he thought.

"But what does any of this have to do with pictures of my folks?"

"Oh right." His uncle cleared his throat and went on. "So, one night, when I was at my wit's end, I lost my temper and told you that you were being silly and that you were in the middle of an air force base with 5000 armed men on it and not one of them was going to let a monster get by and harm you on their watch."

"And that worked?"

"Well, kind of. You looked at me with these huge eyes and asked if that was true and I said, of course it was true – that was what soldiers did after all, protect people. You went quiet and finally you agreed to get back in bed and go to sleep."

"That doesn't answer-"

"God, Skip, do you never let Amanda finish a story either? I don't know why she puts up with you."

"It's the age-old question," Lee admitted. "I'm sorry, Sir. What happened next?"

"The next morning, I woke up and it took me a while to figure out what was wrong and then I realized, all the photos were gone."

"What do you mean gone?"

"Skip." Lee could hear the eye roll down the phone line.

"Sorry, Sir."

"Well, not gone – but every picture of your parents in the whole damn place was in a box in the hall closet – all except that wedding picture and the one I kept in my bedroom. You'd gotten up in the night and gone through the place like a burglar."

"But… why? Why would I do that?"

"Well, that's what I asked you, of course and you said it was to keep the monsters away from them and that you needed to keep them safe – but since Matt was a soldier in that picture, you knew he could take care of himself and your mother, so that's the one you kept."

"That's crazy," Lee protested.

"Well, you were six and a half years old, stubborn as hell and you were finally sleeping, so I wasn't about to argue with you. Mind you, it turned out I'd just traded one problem for another. It was after that that you started getting into fights at school all the time." The Colonel couldn't keep in his chuckle. "It was like you'd appointed yourself the playground sheriff - if there was a bully, you took them on and damn the torpedoes. Hardly a day went by without a call from the school, but at least I knew how to deal with that – although as I recall, you didn't respond to discipline quite as well as my recruits," he added dryly.

"I'm afraid I haven't changed much in that area," Lee responded, equally dryly.

"Somehow I suspect Amanda's figured out how to manage you better than I did," his uncle teased him. "But I had the drawback of having to be the authority figure. And of course, I had to pretend I wasn't proud of you," he went on, "so I used to have to say things like 'you can't even punch properly! Even a raw recruit knows to keep his thumb on the outside of his fist!' so that you didn't end up hurting yourself more than the other guy."

Lee was silent for a moment, absorbing the alien concept that his uncle had ever been proud of him, before dragging his thoughts back the reason for his call. "So, uh… what did you do with the all pictures? After I hid them?"

"Well, they moved with us a couple of times, and every time we moved, I'd put one or two out and every time, they'd disappear again – into a closet or a drawer or somewhere. One time, about a year later, I asked you why again and you just said it was off-limits. It was such an odd thing for a seven-year-old to say, but I figured it was a phrase you'd picked up from Matt, somehow. So after that, I stopped asking – just had it shipped to the storage unit with the rest of your parents' things…"

"WHAT?" Lee shouted down the line before closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. "What do you mean, the rest of their things?"

"The storage unit, Skip," his uncle sounded completely perplexed. "The one in Bethesda – I gave you the key years ago, when you moved to D.C. fulltime to work for the Agency."

"A key?" Lee was having problems catching his breath. "To a storage unit?"

"Yes," said the Colonel patiently. "I gave you a box with all your personal stuff – school transcripts, old passports and whatnot – and there was an envelope on the top with a key and all the information for the safety deposit box with all your parents' paperwork, their marriage certificate and birth certificates, that kind of thing, and Jennie's jewelry, and another key for the storage unit. I set up the rental fees to be paid automatically out of the estate. Have you seriously never looked at any of that?"

"Well, I-I-I guess not," Lee admitted. "I mean, I was 23 and just out of 'Nam when I joined the Agency – you probably told me and I brushed it off as not important. What's in there?"

"Not a lot – all your personal things came with you, obviously. And things like clothes were donated to charity, but there's some small things Matt and Jennie had gotten as wedding presents, personal items, things like that – and of course, all those photos. I can't believe you've never noticed the monthly fees coming off."

"Well I haven't really touched any of the estate money – I just kept it in a savings account as a rainy day fund and I've never needed it…" Lee was getting choked up at the idea of getting back things that had belonged to his parents.

"Well, it isn't a huge sum," admitted the Colonel. "I mean, there was the money from selling the house and most of the contents, and Jennie had inherited a bit of money from her parents, but it was a nice little nest egg. I mean, there was never going to be a fortune, if that's what you're expecting. Not enough money in spy work to get rich, even back then."

The room around Lee tilted on its axis for a moment and he had to grip the edge of his desk to stay upright. "What are you talking about?" he managed to find his voice again. "Dad wasn't a spy – he was a…" his voice trailed off as he realized he didn't actually have any idea what his father did, except for vague memories of leaving the house and coming home again in a suit that smelled of pipe smoke.

"God, Skip – we really needed to talk more when you were younger," his uncle was apologizing now. "I thought you knew that – I thought that's why you followed in his footsteps."

"No, I… I mean, I knew he was in Army Intelligence during the war but I assumed that afterwards… that he'd gone into some kind of civil servant job, something to do with NATO or whatever it was that put him at the signing in '49 when he met Mom." Even as he said it, Lee realized that made no sense if his father was in uniform for their wedding photo.

"No, he worked with OSS right through the war and then stayed with Army Intelligence afterward. By the time you came along, he'd pretty much settled into the less active side of it – domestic stuff, you know, that kept him closer to home. The territory between intelligence agencies was a lot more fluid in those days what with all the fallout from the war. FBI, CIA, the military – everyone was looking for the same Russkies under the bed back then." There was a pause and then his uncle added, "You know what? The next time I'm in Washington, we should spend some time together and I'll try to answer all your questions."

"That'd be good," Lee answered, only half listening. "I…I-I gotta go. Goodbye Sir." He hung up before his uncle could even answer, dropping his head almost between his knees as he tried to control the wave of panic that had overtaken him in the last few minutes.

It was almost instinct to pick the phone back up to call Amanda but before he could even move, the panic enveloped him again, that voice in his head that shrieked " _Don't tell, it's a secret! Don't tell, it's a secret!_ "

Lee let out a noise that in a child would have been a whimper of fear, before curling his body around the phone.

 _There is no such thing as monsters_ , he told himself. _No monsters, no monsters._

* * *

Amanda could feel Lee pulling away, but couldn't find a reason why. He wasn't angry with her – she'd been on the receiving end of his irritation often enough to know that whatever it was, it wasn't aimed at her, but she couldn't help feeling bereft. They were such in the habit of sharing everything and now there was something he was keeping inside.

It wasn't work – or at least she didn't think so. His bits and pieces to do with the upcoming Rene Sinclair visit weren't particularly difficult – simple background checks, location surveys – nothing out of the ordinary there, and she hadn't heard of any roadblocks coming up on any of it that would be causing him grief and usually if it was stupid little things like that, he'd come to her for help.

Or maybe it was work, she thought, maybe he was getting claustrophobic with the busy work they'd been on all summer since Paris, maybe it was just boredom with the monotony of those checks.

 _Or with you._

Amanda pushed back firmly against the little voice in her head. No, it was too abrupt – he'd been his normal self for weeks as they'd explored this new side of themselves, more like himself if that was possible – a kind of carefree silly Lee that she'd only seen a few times until the past few months, a Lee she now realized had been kept carefully toned down for fear of… well, frightening her was her best guess. Even after she'd told him about the rape, he'd still been careful in a way she hadn't recognized until it had all come out in Paris – that he'd known about Leslie for months and said nothing, not knowing the whole truth.

But this wasn't that kind of carefulness either, and in the encyclopedia of fronts Lee Stetson used to hide behind, she was running out of guesses. Not anger, not work, not solicitude – not, not, not - and not any idea what was behind this.

Okay, so maybe it was her _and_ work, she mused. Maybe having a desk in his office had been a bad idea, too much time together – he was still punctiliously polite, holding doors open, guiding her through crowds with that hand on her back but maybe he was feeling hemmed in.

 _No_ , she shook her head as she walked in the Agency door and greeted Mrs. Marston. _No, he's not irritated, it's something else_. _Something is worrying him._

She took the courier parcel from the receptionist with a smile, juggling it along with her purse and the bouquet of garden flowers she'd brought for her desk as she climbed the stairs. She could hear Lee on the phone as she came down the hall, but when she opened the door, he'd already hung up and was leaning back in his chair with a warm smile. She was a little taken aback by the depth of the relief she felt at the sight of that grin and the way he'd flirtatiously suggested they ditch work - under the guise of training, of course – but it was a short-lived relief, nipped in the bud by the way his face had shuttered closed the moment he'd opened that cover letter from the CIA package. And then she'd found herself on the far side of a locked door with no idea why.

* * *

Lee had been waking up with those nightmares for days now. What had seemed like a simple question to his uncle had opened up something that was now haunting him at night and left him fretting and teetering on the edge during the day. Finding out his dad had been a spy had at least given him some avenues to pursue for answers on why his parents had even been out on that lonely road that night, but his backdoor requests for information had been blocked again and again. There didn't even seem to be a coroner's report for the accident which just increased his uneasiness – what had his father been doing that even his name was obliterated across every line of inquiry? Had he been doing something to do with his work with his wife with him and why would he do that? And why had none of this come up with his own security checks? He remembered Amanda teasing him in the early days about the Agency needing to know who her maternal great-great-grandmother was and surely that meant that someone somewhere had access to his father's records when they'd done his background check too? He considered asking Harry Thornton and just as quickly abandoned the idea. Retired or not, if Harry helped him and found out anything, Lee knew he'd be honor-bound to report it and without knowing what might be uncovered, he couldn't drag anyone else into it.

In the end, he'd decided to take the plunge and contact a friend at the CIA directly, unsure what having any more details on his father's work would help with, but it was driving him crazy, the feeling of missing a puzzle piece that would unlock these nightmares. They were coming every night now, and with them, the memories of how they'd tortured his childhood and again later – until he'd learned mental techniques with the Agency to stop them in their tracks. Those techniques weren't working now though – no matter what he did, they still crowded into his brain, sometimes twice a night as he jerked awake, sweating and calling out for parents that never answered to fight a monster he couldn't identify.

There'd been something in the impulse of asking for that file that had tamed them briefly, had let him believe that he had taken action and they'd stop, and up to a point that had been true. He'd seen the thoughtful looks across the room from Amanda, the concern when his attention drifted in briefings, or worse when they were together, and he could tell she hadn't believed it when he'd put it down to just a temporary bout of insomnia.

He'd regretted that excuse the moment it had passed his lips, and that expression had gone across her face, but he'd doubled down, pretending not to have seen it, joking that he just couldn't sleep as well now when she wasn't with him as often with the boys home again from their vacation trip with Joe, turning aside her questions with a pat on the hand, a quick smile and a change in subject.

Last night he'd slept particularly badly and today the Q Bureau had seemed too small, too stuffy, too everything – mostly because he knew his excuses were wearing thin and Amanda had shown every sign of heading for a showdown over it. It was almost too easy to kill two birds with one stone – get out of the office and distract her with false bonhomie – until it had come crashing down with the arrival of that file.

" _Dear Mr. Stetson, in response to your request, please find enclosed the files of all agents connected with the death of Stetson, Matthew Davis…"_

The voices were shrieking again and he had to get Amanda out – out to where it was safe, away from the monsters. He'd spent months worrying about her monsters and there was no way in hell he was going to let whatever this was get her. It was reflex to push her out, to physically force her away. " _Secretsecretsecret_ " the voices chanted. " _Don't tell anyone, keep out, keep out, keep out_."

He'd opened that second file and felt the ground disappear beneath his feet. _Stetson, Jennifer Hamilton, MI6…_ His eyes skimmed the file, his brain helplessly attempting to fill in the redacted black marks with anything that would make sense, but in the end the only thing that leapt clearly off the page were those two words: double agent.

Without another thought, he was on his feet and headed out the door. Time to see what was in that storage unit, once and for all.

He didn't know what had kept him from checking it before – it had been over a week since his uncle had told him about it and another two days after that before he'd gone looking for the box where the key was hidden. He didn't know what had kept him from it except some lingering feeling of not being _allowed_. That made no sense – it was his stuff, things his parents had owned and would have wanted him to have, he assumed. He didn't even know why he expected that he'd find any kind of answer there – it wasn't like there was going to be some Big Book of Double Agents that would tell him once and for all that the CIA file was right.

 _It can't be right_ , he told himself fiercely as he drove to Bethesda but he couldn't shake that feeling of unease that had come over him every time he'd considered going to look.

The storage unit wasn't big and his uncle had been pretty accurate in describing the contents. The boxes of photos and albums were near the front, hardly surprising since they were the last items added. To his amazement, there was another box, filled with school pictures, snapshots of him as a child, a teenager, at sports awards banquets, his graduation – his uncle had documented his childhood as thoroughly as any parent could have and Lee had to sit down heavily on the floor and collect himself. Months ago, he'd been envying Amanda her collection of memories and here was proof he had the same – tucked away carefully by a man who had taken his seven-year-old self seriously about not wanting photos around.

As Lee poked around further, he found a tarnished silver tea service and a box of delicate china tea cups, a few boxes of books with his parents' names written in the flyleaf, knick-knacks including quite a few that he remembered now that he saw them again. All personal items, but nothing that would help him figure out anything.

 _Everything says normal family_ , he sighed. _And not one damn thing that says double agent. And why would I even think it would?_

He carried the boxes of photos out to the Vette, carefully placing them on the passenger seat, then locked the unit up again and drove directly to the bank. The safety deposit box yielded nothing useful either – all the paperwork his uncle had described plus some jewelry. He dangled a locket between his fingers, transported suddenly to a memory of lying in bed, listening to his mother read him a bedtime story and watching the light glance off the gold around her neck. It felt… safe.

He jerked the chain up, grabbing the locket out of midair in his fist with a grunt. Why were his memories becoming so twisted in his head? How can some be so safe when others closed up his throat and sent him careening?

* * *

Amanda paused and took a deep breath. Now that she had the lock pick in her hand, it all seemed a little like she was overreacting. So, he wasn't returning her calls - maybe he wanted some time alone – that wasn't so odd was it? He was probably just having a loner moment; he was entitled to those, right? As quickly as she thought that, she dismissed it. The look on his face when he'd walked in and seen that file in her hands – it hadn't been worry that she'd seen something classified or annoyance that she'd been looking at it – it had been full-blown panic.

" _I told you to go home!"_

" _That was yesterday!"_

"He always sends me home when he thinks he's protecting me from something and he knows I'll interfere," she muttered to herself and began to pick the lock. "So if he knows I'm going to do that anyway, why should I stop now?"

Despite being able to practically hear Leatherneck's voice in her head telling her what to do, she was still surprised at how easily the lock tumblers fell into place. She pushed the door open, half expecting a trap, but it was deadly quiet inside.

"You need better security," she grumbled mildly, and stepped inside. His jacket was hanging on its usual spot – that had to be a good sign, right? Lee was untidy with most things, but never his car and never his suits, so if he was still hanging that up, he couldn't be too distracted by whatever was going on, she comforted herself.

And then she walked into the living room and saw the bomb zone and her heart sank. There was hardly a square inch of surface that didn't have some kind of paperwork on it, including the files she'd seen on his desk, plus a few boxes and _so many pictures_...

"Oh my gosh, what have I done?" she asked herself, recognizing Lee's parents in every one of them.

It had seemed like such a harmless question at the time " _Don't you have any other pictures?"_ but faced with the piles of evidence that screamed that Lee's terrier qualities were in overdrive, she wondered if it hadn't been a step too far. He'd opened up to her about so many things over the years and yet somehow she'd never noticed his parents had remained strangely out of frame. Endless stories about his peripatetic childhood, early Agency adventures, even Andy – over the years he'd relaxed enough to tell her those stories but now… It dawned on her that outside of that one time, tired, frustrated and concussed during the search for the Barnstorm list, he'd never mentioned his parents at all – and even that night, she'd been the one to bring them up. She'd never noticed – or perhaps she'd always just assumed he'd been too young to remember anything, but her feeling of dread intensified as she began to wonder what monsters she'd released with a simple question.

She paused and picked one up – obviously from the files she'd seen on his desk since they had the unmistakeable look of a surveillance photo – and then looked up at the slight sound from down the hall. Hair rising on the back of her neck, she crept down the hall to the bedroom. It had been a noise of distress, and for the first time she wished she had some kind of weapon.

She moved noiselessly down the hall to the bedroom, feeling a wave of relief when she saw Lee was simply sleeping, until she realized how odd it was that he hadn't woken. Normally his reactions were instantaneous – the only times she'd ever seen him so unresponsive was when he was unconscious, a realization that sent her heart racing with fear. Even so, she knew better than to approach him suddenly, so she tiptoed forward and spoke softly from the end of the bed. "Lee?"

* * *

The dream was different this time. There was the same feeling of dread, but it wasn't the monster, it was something more… emotional. Not fear exactly, something more like shame, but he couldn't place his finger on why. He was somewhere he wasn't supposed to be, somewhere secret… classified… off-limits. His heart was in his throat and he knew he was going to be in trouble… something had him squirming. There was a click somewhere, a door opening or closing, he couldn't be sure and then the dread intensified – it _was_ the monster, he knew it but somewhere close by there was also safety… the problem was, he didn't know which direction was which. He backed slowly into a corner, heart pounding as he tried helplessly to see through the darkness, to see what was coming for him.

And then he felt the warm breath on his cheek. " _Lee_ ". Whatever it was, he had to fight back _now_. He couldn't breathe, couldn't think, couldn't move and then it came again. " _Lee_ "

The scream he thought he was giving off as he leapt to attack was echoed as his hands hit warm flesh, and he flung himself into the attack, fighting its weight to get the upper hand.

And found himself looking down into terrified eyes.

"Amanda?"

"Yes." Her voice was squeaky and breathy and she had gone very still as if she was afraid he didn't know her. His heart which had been racing in terror, stopped dead and then began to thump painfully as he saw how badly he'd frightened her.

"What the hell are you doing here?"


	2. What is Remembered

Thanks to the fact that Billy had never found out about them stealing the Promazepam, he sent Lee home to recuperate while Francine was left to tidy up the loose ends of everything that had happened with Blackthorne.

"Billy, come on! This was my case before it even was an Agency case!"

"There should never have been a 'my case' to start with and you know it!" Billy had yelled back at him. "So no, Scarecrow – you're too close to this, and you're already under investigation by IA. You need to accept the suspension and go lie low _now_."

Lee had started to argue about it until he turned and caught the expression on Amanda's face and knew she'd sell him down the river in a heartbeat – even if she was in that boat right along with him.

"Lee, you're not thinking clearly. Why don't you let me take you home and you can pull together your thoughts while everyone here studies the evidence?" she said. Her tone would have sounded like her standard simple cajoling to most of the people in the room but Lee interpreted it – completely correctly – as " _You come home and lie down or I will lock you in the infirmary myself and throw away the key_."

"Fine," he capitulated ungraciously.

She'd insisted on driving as well, by the simple expedient of taking the keys out of his hand and pointing at the passenger seat. He'd opened his mouth to protest and closed it again when her lips thinned.

The drive back to his apartment was eerily silent. He'd thought she was angry until they were finally, truly alone in his apartment and she'd wrapped her arms around him and pulled him in.

"I thought we had a deal," she said, her voice muffled because of the way her face was pressed against his chest.

"A deal?"

"I'd stay in the car if you wouldn't go running off to do things on your own," she answered, lifting her eyes to look at him, eyes that Lee was horrified to see had the sheen of tears in them. "What would have happened if I hadn't been able to come after you? What were you thinking?"

"I wasn't," he admitted, dropping his head to rest it on hers. "I just… I suddenly saw everything so clearly… And I was moving before I really thought about it."

Amanda sighed and squeezed him closer. "He was going to kill you. If you'd been alone… no one would have believed you weren't there to attack him… no one would ever have believed anything we found."

"And he'd have had me filed away as a bad agent just like my parents," he agreed, shaken as it suddenly hit him how close they'd been to losing everything.

They stood there in silence for several seconds, both of drawing comfort from the other before Amanda pulled back and ran her hands along his scalp. "Go shower. I'm going to make us something to eat and then you are going to rest – like you should have been doing ever since you took that junk."

He knew she was right – he was bone tired and that dizzy spell in Blackthorne's study had almost been lethal. If Amanda hadn't been there… or if she'd ended up in Blackthorne's sights... He realized he was shivering. "Okay."

Even more than hearing the word, Amanda saw the capitulation in the way his posture had slumped and caressed his cheek before turning away to head for the kitchen. He stood there for a moment, eyes closed, listening to the sounds of her moving quietly around, and felt the same relief he'd experienced when she'd looked after him after the Barnstorm list fiasco. She was so astonishingly restful – she knew how to make her point without scolding and then leave it alone to sink in. He shook himself and headed for the shower.

She was still puttering when he stepped back out, a comforting presence somewhere in the apartment as he toweled himself off and pulled on a pair of sweats before collapsing on the bed. He had no idea how long he'd been asleep when he startled awake with a gasp, but the sun was setting outside his window and Amanda was curled up beside him. She'd pulled one of his arms over her and she was gently scratching his head in long smooth strokes. He tightened his arms around her convulsively as he took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Amanda."

"That's much better than last time," she teased him. "Less exciting though."

"You're still here."

"Well, of course I'm still here. Where else would I be?"

"I thought it was because I'd been bad," he blurted out.

"What?" It was like there'd been a shift in topic that she'd missed.

"I'd almost forgotten… My parents - the day they didn't come home – I'd gotten in trouble at school, and my mother had to talk to the teacher. I thought they'd left because they were angry with me."

"Oh Lee." Amanda's voice broke as she pulled him even closer, pressing a kiss on his forehead. "You were just a little boy – they would never have been that angry."

"I can't even remember what I did now. I just remember sitting on a chair outside the principal's office, waiting for Mom. My feet didn't even touch the floor."

"Not like now," he could feel her smiling against his temple.

"No," he agreed with a half laugh, before turning serious again.

"Do you remember what happened? When your mom came, I mean?" she asked.

"Not really – I don't think I was worried when it happened, but afterward – I think I thought it was my fault they were gone. But I can remember that feeling, sitting on that chair, waiting for my mother…"

Amanda was silent for a long time, her fingers still trailing through his hair. "Do you think…?" she said thoughtfully, "Do you think maybe that's why you were always getting into trouble? Hoping your parents would come?"

"You sound like Pfaff," he said gruffly, but he didn't pull away. "But… I don't know… maybe? Who knows what a five-year-old thinks?"

He was still tense under her hands and Amanda knew there was something still bothering him. Used to the way he mulled things over silently, she kissed him again lightly and waited.

"I told you that I had those nightmares when I was a kid, but that's not…" He paused to pull together his thoughts. "They came back – later."

"Later?"

"When I was older. When I…" A beat, then it all came out in a whisper as if even now, he felt he couldn't say it aloud. "The first time I had a crush on a boy in my class. I couldn't even tell you his name now, but I was 12 years old and I was head over heels, but I knew it wasn't _allowed_ … I couldn't tell anyone, I couldn't feel that way – it was _off-limits_ _…_ just like that room in the basement…" He gave a small bitter smile, meeting her eyes for a moment and then dropping them again. "I guess I should see the funny side: most kids have monsters under the bed – mine were in the closet."

He allowed himself another quick glance; Amanda was nodding gently and giving him an encouraging smile - not because she thought it was funny but as if she knew exactly how much he need to make a joke about it, that if he didn't, he might not make it through.

"And that's when the dreams started coming back – calling for my parents and never being able to find them and feeling like even if I did find them, they'd be angry. It was like I was being punished all over again for being _bad_ … for being _wrong_."

"Oh, Sweetheart." He could heard the heartbreak in her voice and wondered how he'd ever been lucky enough to find someone so willing to come to his defense every time. "It was never wrong to love someone."

"Oh yes, it was," Lee answered, voice still low. "A few years before that, I walked in on Barney once – I've told you about him right? I'd gotten into trouble – no surprise there – and I barged over to the kitchen to get some sympathy or something, but he wasn't alone."

"Ah."

"I mean - they weren't even doing anything, not that I saw anyway, but they jumped away from each other like I'd thrown a bucket of cold water on them. And Barney looked so frightened. Of _me_." The hurt of that moment echoed in his voice.

"I can imagine," said Amanda softly.

"No, you can't," Lee shook his head. "Not even you – you just can't. It was the early 60s on an Air Force base and if I'd said anything – even though I didn't understand what I'd seen – it would have been the end of him. Not just a dishonorable discharge – he could have been jailed for it, or thrown in a mental hospital… For all I know, it was still a hanging offense then - it could literally have killed him. But it wasn't just that. He didn't just look frightened – when he saw it was me, he looked _ashamed_. Like he'd let me down – and then later, when I understood, I was ashamed too. That I'd outed him, that I'd frightened him, that he'd been afraid of me – and that I was like him."

"But you didn't out him," she reminded him.

"No, but he must have lived with the fear that I would for a long time." Lee gave a short hard laugh. "Right up until I came to him trying to figure out what was wrong with me - because I didn't have anyone else I could go to, when the nightmares started again."

"There was never anything wrong with you!" Amanda said fiercely. "You know that!"

"I didn't know that then. And you know better than most that there are people who'd disagree now," he pointed out. "Especially now."

"Yeah," she sighed.

"It just screwed me up for so long, you know? That feeling of shame – that my uncle would hate me even more, that I couldn't let anyone in because if they found out, I'd have to see that look… And then-" he paused and tried to get his thoughts in order. "I never let that part of me out, not ever, when I was growing up. I mean, I was lucky – I liked girls too, so I flirted with girls, and I did guy things and tried to be the all-American boy – because I was _not_ going to be that guy, you know?"

"Mmm-hmm," Amanda nodded. "J.C. was the same – he was friends with everyone, told everyone he didn't have time for a girlfriend, always said he liked it better when he got to hang out with all his friends – just a social butterfly who never wanted to settle down… We all knew, but we'd known since he was teensy. It wasn't until he was older that he learned to hide it."

"Yeah," Lee sighed. "Well, I managed to hide it for a long time. Right through high school, right through college and I never acted on it because, hey, I liked girls and I thought I could choose to just not be that guy."

"So then what happened? Let me guess - Andy just swept you off your feet?"

Lee couldn't help the smile that flicked across his face. He could hear the gurgle of laughter in her tone, just teasing him about past loves no differently than she did about any of the girls she'd seen him with when they first met. "No, nothing that simple," he answered. "Vietnam came before that."

"Ah," she sighed into his ear and cuddled him closer. "More monsters?"

"Different monsters," he agreed. "I found my way into G-2 pretty quickly because I knew my dad had been in intelligence too and I definitely didn't go into the Air Force because I wanted to piss off my uncle."

"And you're so great with boats, it couldn't be the Navy," said Amanda lightly.

Lee leaned back and gave her a quick kiss. "Get over yourself, Captain Bligh. I can sail just fine and you know it."

Amanda merely smiled and waited for the rest of the story.

"The thing is..." Lee started, stopped and started again. "The Army is a really masculine place – and especially with the draft going on, basic training was a lot of young guys in a small space, everywhere you went. Lots of sweat and blood and spitting contests and fistfights and bodies everywhere and a whole bunch of hormones with nowhere to go because there are no women anywhere."

He paused again, waiting for her to comment, but she stayed silent, just a hand stroking through his hair to let him know she was still listening.

"And I never initiated anything, but things happen… Roughhousing turns to other things and in a bunkhouse full of guys doing what guys do, you don't talk about what you hear going on in the dark because if it's not you, you're probably still…" He made an unmistakeable motion with his hand, then winced. "I can't believe I'm telling you this."

"Pfft. Like I don't know about boys," chuckled Amanda. "Although, oh my gosh, you've just reminded me why I am so not looking forward to the next few years. My friend Maria has a boy just a little older than Phillip – she says she has a pair of tongs just for picking up the dirty socks in his room."

Lee gave a choking gasp and rested his head on her shoulder while they both laughed. God, he loved her. He loved that she was still teasing him and keeping it light and not making him feel like this was the most disgusting thing she'd ever heard.

"Well, the good news is that we mostly grow out of it," he chuckled. "The bad news is that we grow out of it because we find new distractions…" He pulled her down and over his body, savouring the throaty laugh she gave off as she pressed closer to kiss him – he'd had no idea how sexy it was to have someone laugh during a kiss until now.

"So what happened in Vietnam?" she prodded him gently, when they finally separated and had their breath back. His hand had slipped under her shirt at some point and he stroked his thumb along her skin to ground himself as he picked up the story with a sigh.

"Well, once we were overseas, we were crammed together even more - in tents and foxholes and homesick – well, I wasn't because, well you know why – and these little… well, you wouldn't call them romances, maybe more like close friendships – those got more cemented and guys who would spend every daylight hour throwing homophobic slurs at each other were perfectly willing to find relief any way they could in the dark."

He fell silent; Amanda could practically hear his brain grinding away, trying to find a way to describe it.

"I was… what the guys would have called 'pretty' back then, but I was also already this big and strong so it was easy to not go along with anything I didn't want to."

"But you did want to," she stated, matter-of-factly.

"I was only 21 – I didn't know what the hell I wanted," he admitted. "But at 21, I was also one of the oldest guys there and there was this really young guy with us – I mean, my God, he must have been drafted the day he turned 18, but he seemed even younger. The guys called him Georgia because that's where he was from, but also because it was a girl's name. He wasn't big or strong, he was just young and innocent and he gave off the vibe – you know the one I mean?" Amanda nodded. "He'd lived his whole life in a small town, never even been out of his state until he was drafted and here he was, 8000 miles from home, scared to death and he needed a friend and he needed a- a-"

"He needed a protector," Amanda finished for him. "And there you were."

"Yes," he answered gratefully. "I adopted him, I guess you'd say." He gave a sudden short laugh. "You know it's funny – I just remembered talking with my uncle last year – I ended up asking him if his relationship with Barney had been more than friendship and he said it hadn't, but he'd been purposely vague about it – because even if people thought they knew about Barney, they'd still never do anything about it when he had an officer as a protector."

"Like father, like son," she couldn't help saying, surprising another bark of laughter from him.

"I guess so," he agreed. "Except- " He lifted his eyes to meet hers. "It wasn't like the Colonel and Barney – we weren't just friends."

Amanda nodded. "No."

"It was easy, you know – he had a crush on me… I didn't even have to do anything."

"You never do," Amanda quipped.

Lee blushed and ducked his head before looking back up at her. "But it was different there and I've never stopped to think about whether I pressured him somehow… I mean, I didn't threaten or ask or anything, but I was bigger and stronger and I could have, well, I could have done anything to him if I'd wanted it badly enough."

"No, you couldn't!" Amanda started to laugh and he looked at her quizzically. "I mean, yes, you could have physically, but you're _you_. You couldn't have done any such thing!" Her face softened and she stroked his cheek. "Why do you always think the worst of yourself about this kind of stuff?"

"Why do you always assume the best?" he countered. "It was different then, I was different then."

"Not that different," she said firmly. "I don't believe that."

Lee gave her a shy smile. "Thank you." He took a breath. "Anyway, long story short – that was the first time I let myself be myself – but even then it was hidden and something to be ashamed of."

"Did you have nightmares then too?"

"In the middle of a war? You bet – but not about that."

"What happened to him?" Amanda was suddenly aware she might not like the answer.

"Leg wound. Purple heart. Shipped home. Probably still back in his little town." Lee frowned slightly at that. "Although I hope not. He deserved better than to spend a life lying about who he was."

"And what happened to you?" she asked softly. "After he got shipped home, I mean?"

"Well, I'd begged and pleaded my way into a transfer into G-2 by then and I was in Saigon more, so…" Lee shrugged. "You could get lost in a lot of different clubs in Saigon in those days and no one was watching too closely which ones as long as you were getting the intel." His eyes narrowed as he focused on a point on the wall. "It was liberating, I guess you'd say. And definitely educational."

"Except…?" Amanda hazarded.

Lee gave her a rueful look – of course, she'd heard the unspoken 'except' in there.

"Except that eventually I had to come home and it all went under wraps again, especially with a bunch of straight-arrow Elliot Ness wannabes and there I was in the thick of training with this guy that was the absolute straightest arrow of all of them as far as I knew, but who got under my skin, and all day long it was 'need to know' and secrecy and 'don't tell' and then at night, it was nightmares again." He sighed and glanced up at her. "And then, well, you know the rest – Paul recruited me for the Oz network, I fell for a sweet girl – no more nightmares. Lost the girl, found the boy, still no nightmares."

"None?" Amanda could see the soft look in Lee's eyes as he remembered Andy.

"None," he confirmed. "It was so gradual the way we moved from friends to something more. He was kind and understanding… well, he was just _safe_ if you know what I mean. I was in it before I knew it and it felt _right_. We weren't out, but we weren't ashamed when we were together. We were just us."

"It sounds wonderful."

Lee moved so he could face her more fully and ran a finger down her cheek. "I'm sorry – you can't want to hear all this."

"Of course I do," Amanda's tender expression never changed. "You loved him and that paved the way for me, I think. I mean, I'll always be a little jealous of the time he got with you, but that's just normal, don't you think?"

Lee knew what she meant – he felt the same way about Joe after all – and he nodded slowly. She gathered him into her arms again and rocked him gently.

"So wadda ya think? No more nightmares?" she asked.

"No more nightmares," he agreed, relaxing into her embrace.

"Good - then I want you to rest and no arguing with me about it or I'll... I'll steal all Francine's chocolate and tell her it was you."

"Your blackmail techniques get better all the time," he smiled up at her. "But I'm not going to argue - right now, I'm so tired I never want to leave this bed again."

"Good - I mean, I don't believe for one second that you won't be arguing with me by tomorrow, but I'll take it for today. Now, do you want me to turn on your dresser light?"

"Why? Are you leaving?" There was the tiniest trace of worry in his voice.

"No, of course not, I just thought maybe tonight you'd want it on," she reassured him.

"No," Lee sighed. "No, I'm fine as long as you're here," he admitted.

"Well, I'm not going anywhere," she said, brushing soothing fingers through his hair. "Don't you worry about that."

Lee was most of the way back to sleep after several minutes when it occurred to him. "Amanda?" he said, drowsily.

"Mmm?"

"When I was under? What was the something else you wanted to ask?" He could feel her stiffening as he went on. "Was it something about my past?"

"Ohhh," she breathed out. "No, nothing like that, Sweetheart. It was nothing, don't worry about it."

"What was it then?" he was almost slurring but he fought to stay awake just a little longer.

"Just… nothing. It wasn't important."

The next wave of after-effects from the Promazepam was hitting him and he could barely fight the lassitude, but he knew he shouldn't leave it at that. "No," he argued, voice deep with exhaustion. "What was it?"

"Oh well, you know, I just wondered for a second if you knew when your parents met because that didn't add up, but now we know why and besides that, it didn't matter to the case in the end anyway."

"It didn't add up?" he asked, completely befuddled.

"You told me months ago that your parents met at the NATO talks in 1949, remember? And then their CIA files said they married in May 1949, right?"

"Yeah? So?"

"Well the NATO talks were in April, only the month before – it seemed like maybe there could be a reason they married so fast, but of course, they didn't – we know now that they'd met years earlier."

"Wait – do you think they had to get married? Because of me?" he asked as he tried to follow her logic.

Amanda gave a soft laugh. "No – you were born more than a year later, Sweetheart. I think they just wanted to get married at last after hiding their relationship for so long."

"Okaaay… but why did you think that mattered?"

"Oh I don't know – you were babbling away about secrets and things behind doors and I don't know – it just reminded me of how Joe and I hid our marriage at first to fool the law school. I always wondered if Phillip remembered that Joe was hardly around that first year."

Lee made a noise deep in his chest that Amanda knew was him _not_ saying "or ever."

She felt him start to slip back into the sleep and felt a momentary twinge of annoyance that she hadn't gotten him to eat, but decided the sleep was more important for now.

"Touching," Lee mumbled.

"What's touching, Sweetheart?"

"No, not _what_."

Amanda could feel him struggling to stay awake long enough to clarify it and leaned closer to hear him. "My parents. That's what I remember. They were always touching. You know, holding hands, or cuddling…" he squeezed her sleepily. "It was nice."

Lee exhaled as if he were releasing a weight as he fell back asleep, burying his head into the curve of her body.

Amanda reached to tug the pillow into a more comfortable spot before letting herself relax as well.

 _Just one more thing… you know what, never mind._

She let her fingers trace the side of his face, thumbing over the line in his cheek where the dimple had left permanent creases.

 _My Amanda._

"I love you too," she whispered.

* * *

"OK. I'm gonna leave you alone now."

All the peace he'd felt when she arrived was wiped out in the panic of hearing those words from her. Alone was the last thing in the word he needed to be – ever.

"No, Amanda, no, don't go." He grabbed her hand and looked into her eyes, relieved when he saw the understanding there. He glanced down at the markers and that stark lettering that said so little about the kind of people his parents had been. "I sure wish you could have known them."

"I think I do," Amanda smiled at him tenderly.

Lee's answering smile said he was almost back to his old self, but she could sense the pain he'd never quite lose.

"I stayed away for a long time – the Colonel always makes a point of telling me he comes here when he's in town and I just… I've kind of always made him think I did as well, but especially after Andy died… I just couldn't come. I couldn't face the idea they would have hated him, or me… I couldn't face the idea that my parents would have…" he choked on the words.

"They wouldn't have," Amanda said firmly.

"How do you know that?" The question echoed with the same sharp tone he'd used just a few days before, but this time she recognized the pain behind the anger.

 _Oh, come on now - you know that isn't true._

 _How do I know that?_

Last time she'd backed off a bit in the face of his anger, but not this time.

"Because I know you. I know the man you are, the man you became in the face of things most people can't imagine. Because I know the man Andy loved… and the man I-"

Amanda took a deep breath and he knew with absolute certainty what she was going to say next. He leaned forward and kissed her suddenly, jolting her into a momentary silence. He knew how much he loved her – he wanted nothing more than to tell her and hear her say it back – but not like this, not when it would just seem like something to comfort him. He'd doubted too much in his life to ever want to doubt those words from her.

"Lee?" She sounded concerned – she didn't know why he'd stopped her.

He leaned in to kiss her again, then stepped back, squeezing her hand as he laced their fingers together and gestured with a tilt of his head to the sunny paths that wound through the memorial park.

"Just… Walk with me? Please?" he asked simply.

A beat and then a soft smile of comprehension. She squeezed back and stepped forward, closing the distance to stand beside him. "Of course."


End file.
